Open a project bundle — BimCraft help

What you'll do

Open a project bundle (.ccbundle.zip) and work with the project the way it was organised: its views, its layouts and its property groups, on top of the model.

A bundle holds:

the model as IFC,
the layouts as PDF and DWG,
a list of what IFC leaves out: the views (each with its storey, layer combination and scale), the layouts and the drawings placed on them, property definitions in their groups, classifications, and standards such as layers, pen sets, line types, fills, surfaces and composites.

Bundles are written by an open-source script that runs inside Archicad and asks Archicad itself for these lists. BimCraft never reads .pln or .tpl files directly; see Open .pln and .pla project files.

Make a bundle in Archicad

The script is a preview: it has not been tried on every Archicad version yet. Get it from github.com/getcadcraft/bim-project-bundle. You need Archicad 24 or later and Python 3.8 or later; nothing else to install.

Save archicad_bundle.py into a folder, for example C:\cc-bundle.
In Archicad, open the project and make a publisher set named exactly CadCraft bundle: the 3D view as IFC, every layout as PDF, and every layout again as DWG, published to files on disk in one flat folder.
With the project open, run python archicad_bundle.py --probe --out . once. It only reads, and writes probe.json.
Run python archicad_bundle.py --out . --translator "IFC4 Reference View" (use the IFC translator you picked). Archicad publishes the set and the script writes <project>.ccbundle.zip.

If publishing through the script fails, publish the set by hand and run python archicad_bundle.py --out . --no-publish --files <folder>\*.ifc <folder>\*.pdf <folder>\*.dwg. The repository's README has every option. If something does not come through, open an issue there and attach probe.json.

Open a bundle

Click Choose a file, or drop the .ccbundle.zip on BimCraft.
The model opens as any IFC does, and the Project bundle section appears on the left, under the file's facts.

Nothing is uploaded: the bundle is read on your computer, one file at a time, so a large model is not copied twice.

Show a view

Under Views, views are grouped by the folders they had in the project. Click a view's name:

A floor plan shows only its storey, seen from the top.
Its layer combination hides the elements on the layers that combination hides. The status line says how many elements that hid.
Its scale is shown beside the name and in the status line.
A 3D view shows every storey.

To show everything again, use Show all in Show and tick every storey.

Open a layout

Under Layouts, each layout shows its number, name, paper size and the views placed on it.

PDF saves the layout's PDF from the bundle.
DWG opens the layout's drawing in the 2D view. Click any view to come back to the model.

A layout with neither says No file in the bundle.

See properties in the project's groups

Pick an element. Property groups shows its properties under the groups the project defined, matched through the property set and name the definition gives for IFC, or else by its name. The rest stay in Properties as usual. Property definitions lists every definition with its group, type and IFC name.

Standards and notes

Standards counts the layers, layer combinations, pen sets, line types, fills, surfaces, composites and materials in the bundle.
Notes lists what the script could not get from that version of Archicad, any field BimCraft could not read, and any file the bundle names but does not hold.

Troubleshooting

"… is a zip but not a project bundle." The zip has no manifest.json. Unzip it and open the .ifc inside.
"… is a newer project bundle than this BimCraft reads." Update BimCraft.
"… does not hold the model its manifest names." The zip was cut short or edited. Make the bundle again.
A view shows every storey. Its storey is not in the model's IFC (the status line says so). Check that the IFC export included that storey.